I was always a strange kid. I was born with Asperger’s so for me social interactions weren’t always the easiest. I was never popular in school and dealt with a lot of very harsh treatment from my peers. I remember I used to have to mentally prepare myself for anything people would say to me in middle school.
One of the wisest things I was ever told as a kid is “ignore the other kids. If they won’t stop just kind of agree with them.” and what my family meant when they told me that wasn’t when a kid was telling me “Nobody loves you! Kill yourself” to say “Okay.” then do it.
They were teaching me an important lesson. If you just kind of tell a person who’s trying to hurt your feelings “Okay cool.” it disarms them. What are they gonna say from there? Their insults failed. All they’re doing is trying to get a rise out of you. I became bulletproof after middle school. People would come at me and say the most horrible things and I’d say just respond with “Oh yeah that’s probably true” and walk away. It always left people stunned to silence.
I’ve always been a creative person, I love writing, I used to paint, I’ve been making video content since I was 12-13 years old. However, the one area in my life as a kid where I was crushed by peoples words was on the internet. “Why?” You may be asking. Because I couldn’t SEE the look in peoples eyes, I couldn’t gauge the reaction I was getting. I knew that ignoring people in real life worked, I knew that just agreeing with them would shut them up, but on the internet it was scary.
Those videos I made when I was 12-13 years old were, of course, very cringe-worthy. They weren’t well liked. I totally understand why, however I let the criticism get to me. After receiving a heavy dose of both constructive criticism and just blind trolling, I basically refused to use YouTube to post any of my videos or really post anything I made outside of my own friend group.
As you may know recently I’ve been writing a lot about facing your fears and speaking the truth and I’ve finally decided I was going to go through and archive all of my old videos that I’ve tried to hide from for so many years.
Obviously interactions online will never be the same as interacting with people in real life. So yes, I wouldn’t still blindly be like “Oh yeah you’re right” but the idea of ignoring it and living your life still stands. That’s why for years on the internet “ignore the troll” has been a common thing.
I’ve realized that it doesn’t matter if I can’t see if me ignoring people worked. I was stopping people in my real life from being critical, but I still cared too much what other people thought of me. The opinions of others don’t matter.
Don’t ignore the past but also don’t live in it. Learn to be better and move on with your life and embrace your mistakes.